Venture capital

I spent some time in early-stage venture capital, at Union Square Ventures, at the beginning of my career, and I still find the industry fascinating and bizarre. A few of my favorite books about it all:

• The New Venturers John W. Wilson The story of venture capital as it was just getting going – how New Yorkers moved west and the asset class came into its own. The most striking thing, for me, was how many sentences could be lifted from the pages (via iPhone screenshot to Twitter, natch) to explain today.

• Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital Carlota Perez It’s dense and academic, but I found its main argument about the existence of an installation phase (when the infrastructure required by new technologies is built) and a deployment phase (when new technologies comes into their own), and how those phases interact with financial markets, worth understanding.

• The Essays of Warren Buffet Warren Buffet Collected and categorized snippets of Buffet’s shareholder letters. Buffet invests in very different assets than early-stage technology firms, so his lessons don’t entirely transfer to venture, but it’s still near-impossible to argue against “Warren Buffet investment advice” generally.

• Principles Ray Dalio These principles aren’t specifically about investing – more about life-living – but they still apply: conviction, “cheating” and asking for help, iterative improvements, and honest self reflection all seem near-hallmarks of people with great investing track records.

• How a Book is Born Keith Gesson It’s a simple explanation of seed investing, but for book publishers. An interesting, orthogonal take on the process of supporting commercial and creative endeavors.

• Venture Deals Brad Feld and Jason Mendelsohn Super tactical advice on how early-stage financing works for technology startups in the US in the early 2010s. This, coupled with Venture Hacks, is the best crash course of which I know. (I even bought this book for my mom to explain my job a few years back.)

• Creative Capital Spencer Ante The story of Georges Doriot, probably the first venture capitalist. He didn’t get the model quite right – a public company housed his fund, for example – but it’s curious to learn how he tried to finance new ideas.

• Cryptonomicon Neal Stephenson Work on an idea in this book, and there’s a few VCs who’ll write a check automatically.

• Something Ventured
  A movie, not a book, but worth including anyway, since it’s another view – with interviews – of how this industry got started.